They gathered on the black glass by the thousands, men and women, human and Ogier-even a few Nym scattered through the crowd. Few of them could channel, yet among those few were some of the most powerful Servants in the world. There were Aiel there in working clothes, and the Holder of the Third Rod of Dominion.

In the past this place had sometimes been closed to the public, for the crowd stood on the grounds of the Collam Daan, and even the most stringent safety measures were not always enough when certain experiments were going on. That was why the death toll had not been greater. Even so, more lives had been claimed than in any accident in a hundred years-well over four hundred of the world's best and brightest, and all who had worked with them.

The Sharom had fallen here one year ago, spouting black twisting flame. Space and time had wrenched themselves. Two thirds of the campus had burned in that unnatural fire, despite the efforts of a dozen channelers and a hundred disaster workers. One thousand three hundred thirteen men and women-many Aes Sedai, but far from all. Researchers, students, janitorial staff, firemen and paramedics, a trio of children there with their mother...

The last names were, at this moment, being carved into the glass.

"We cannot bring them back," she said. "They are beyond us now. We miss the love and friendship. We miss the intensity of their minds, the secrets they might yet have found. We miss even the power that destroyed them, when our attempt to harness it failed. But most of all, we miss them. We who survived."

No one should have been able to survive that unimaginable blast. For most, no body remained to bury. There had been fragments of bone and charred tissue. Silhouettes had been painted in ash on the untarnishable walls of the Collam Daan. Those in the Sharom itself, some researchers thought, might have been ripped beyond atoms by some unthinkable singularity.

And then there was the woman standing before them today.

"There are, no doubt, some of you who resent my survival. In the Light's truth, I admit I do as well. My friends and colleagues died here, and I...I alone..." Tears trickled down her face.

Half an hour after the blast subsided, with rescue workers still combing the outlying buildings, a gateway had opened, and Mierin Eronaile Sedai had stumbled from the Unseen World onto the hot black glass, burn scars marring much of the left side of her body. There had been a cursory investigation into the disaster, but the tertiary backups in the surviving computers had shown no indication of wrongdoing. Not that anyone could have had the heart to punish Mierin beyond the pain she still inflicted on herself today. She had not earned her third name, of course, but there would be time for that; no one doubted her career would go on. The burns, of course, were long gone.

She struggled for a moment, then flipped through several pages. "This...this memorial will stand to the end of the Age, if not longer. We will not forget those whom we lost. Their names are inscribed on this sea of glass, and in our hearts. There they will live on, until the Wheel turns and they are reborn."

"Thank you to those of you who worked on this memorial. Thank you to those who have gathered here to pay your respects. Thank you to our surviving friends and families who could not be here today, but who have sustained us in our grief. And...and...thank you for saving me, Beidomon Neravan Sedai. Without you, only my name would have been here today."

Mierin gathered herself visibly and gestured for the platform of air to be lowered. "I give you my colleague, Joar Addam Nessosin Sedai."

Joar coughed and ahemed for a moment as his colleagues made some final adjustments to their instruments. "Thank you, Mierin. All of us are deeply moved today, by your words and by the memory of loss. I call this piece 'Meditation on Dark Fire'. I hope it touches your hearts. I hope it soothes your griefs, even just a little." He ran his fingers over the keys of his obaen and began to play, softly.

Perhaps it was not his best piece, the mourners agreed. But then, perhaps it was not fitting that his best piece be reserved for such a tragedy as this. They stood, swaying in time to the music, as the band of the Prodigy of Shorelle played and sang.

Dark whispers rose with the music, whispers that wound their way not into the listeners' ears, but directly into their minds and hearts. The whispers were not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time.

But they were a beginning.